NASA's Swift satellite telescope was due to tumble out of orbit and burn up in the Earth's atmosphere in the early hours of Wednesday, nearly 22 years after it was launched, Reuters reported in a story carried by The Straits Times.
The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which weighs roughly 1,452 kilograms, has studied gamma-ray bursts and other cosmic phenomena since 2004 using an array of three telescopes. It cost about US$500 million and was the first space observatory of its kind to work across several wavelengths at once. It was built for a two-year mission.
Fragments surviving re-entry were unlikely to reach populated areas, according to NASA.
Swift carries no propulsion system of its own, and has been drifting towards re-entry for months. Astronomers had hoped to extend its working life by several years by somehow giving the satellite a lift.
In July, NASA and the Arizona startup Katalyst launched a purpose-built rescue vehicle called Link to rendezvous with it. Link began spinning uncontrollably soon after reaching space, and by the middle of August mission managers had abandoned the effort and accepted that Swift would meet its fate.
The attempt was the first US mission of its kind, and was watched for reasons beyond astronomy: it served as a trial of orbital grappling, a satellite-maintenance technology with potential dual-use military applications, regarded as significant to the space race between the United States and China.
The observatory was not retired because it stopped working. It was overtaken by its own orbit.
That is the figure worth dwelling on. Swift was specified for two years and delivered nearly twenty-two, which on its own design life amounts to eleven consecutive missions, ten of them unbudgeted. This newspaper can find no other programme that has exceeded its brief by an order of magnitude and been reported as coming to an end.
The rescue attempt invites the same comparison. Link was launched in July to extend the life of a satellite that had already outlived its specification by two decades, and was given up in August. The spacecraft sent to save Swift worked for about six weeks. The spacecraft it was sent to save had been working for twenty-two years.
Our analysts note that the only immovable constraint in the whole operation was the absence of an engine. Swift could be observed, grappled at and written about, but it could not be asked to leave, because leaving requires propulsion, and propulsion was the one thing a two-year mission had not been given.
This is the part of the record that will stand. A satellite with no means of changing its own orbit kept its instruments working for twenty-two years and could not be shifted by a vehicle purpose-built in 2026 to shift it.
The Department of Unnecessary Research has reviewed the timeline and identified the single component that performed exactly to specification, on the first attempt, without intervention. It was the atmosphere.